Category:
Books

Live Alone And Like It

I posted two days ago about the 1937 book How To Live Without A Woman, which celebrated the bachelor lifestyle. But what about women who wanted to live without a man... or even without another woman? Marjorie Hillis's Live Alone And Like It (1936) was the book for them.

Based on the review below, it seems that while Hillis offered some good advice for women living alone, she was less persuasive about them liking it:

One gets the impression that the author, Marjorie Hillis, has herself lived in solitary state for quite a spell, doesn't think much of it, but has made the best of it.

You can read the book for free at archive.org.



Indianapolis Star - Oct 4, 1936

Posted By: Alex - Thu Feb 02, 2023 - Comments (4)
Category: Books, 1930s, Women

How to live without a woman

Alexander Wright's 1937 book, How To Live Without A Woman, was a celebration of bachelorhood. But it seems that Wright's strategy for life without a woman was to get his female friends to feel sorry for him and do his housework for him.

A woman friend will help you dispose of your useless accumulations. "They have not the slightest regard for the accumulations of others," Author Wright warns.

Mr Wright maintains with a little judicious flattery any woman will help solve a bachelor's housekeeping problems.

Doesn't really seem like he was living without a woman if he was still getting women to do all his work. And you have to wonder how long he managed to keep any female friends before they figured out what was going on.



Pittsburgh Press - Sep 18, 1938

Posted By: Alex - Tue Jan 31, 2023 - Comments (2)
Category: Gender, Men, Women, Books, 1930s

The Elizabethean Underworld

This review by the famous Anthony Burgess (A CLOCKWORK ORANGE) alerted me to the existence of a fascinating book. Turns out it's available at the Internet Archive. The lexicon of thieves talk that Burgess mentions makes for fun reading.

Review source: The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) 19 Mar 1965, Fri Page 11





Posted By: Paul - Sat Jan 28, 2023 - Comments (1)
Category: Crime, History, Books, Slang

Coconuts:  Production, Processing, Products

Every now and then, WU strives to find a video or book or practice so boring that it merges into true weirdness. I think 311 pages on the humble coconut might qualify. Learn about the ten different cuts of coconut meat, and so much more!










Posted By: Paul - Tue Jan 24, 2023 - Comments (3)
Category: Boredom, Food, Industry, Factories and Manufacturing, Books

Midwatch In Verse

A new book explores the obscure poetic tradition of sailors in the U.S. Navy writing the first deck log of the new year in verse. As explained by the NW Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

For the average person, the deck logs of the U.S. Navy are what Dave Johnson would call mind-numbing and indecipherable.
The records, quasi-legal documents, were a requirement of each ship to note various bits of technical information -- ship speed and direction, even the number of propeller rotations and other things that would only be useful or make sense if you were in the Navy.
But one time of year, sailors were allowed to deviate from the benign record keeping and exhibit creativity with brief storytelling. During the first watch of the New Year, from midnight to 4 a.m., the Officer of the Deck could record in verse.

No one is sure when, or why this tradition began. The earliest known example (reproduced below) dates back to 1926, but the tradition was apparently already well established by then.

More info: midwatch-in-verse.com

I stand on the deck at midnight
As the clocks are striking the hour
And I’ll keep the watch until morning
To the best of my humble power.
We are anchored in Pedro harbor
Tho there isn’t much of a lee
And why they call it a harbor
Is something I never could see
But our hook is in hole A seven
And our center anchor chain
Has forty-five in the hawse pipe
And a very gentle strain.
When we anchored our trusty leadsman
Made a very careful cast
Finding eight and a half good fathoms
As the bugler blew the blast.
And down below in the fire rooms
Which the black gang ought to man
The steam is blowing bubbles
In number seven can.
All the battleship divisions
Swing nearby on the blue
Except the West Virginia
And the Mississippi too.
The Senior Officer Present
Floats peacefully in his sleep
On the good ship California
The guardian of the deep.
At one fifteen Roskelly
A pill rolling pharmacist’s mate
Returned from his leave on schedule
He’s lucky he wasn’t late.
That’s all the dope this morning
Except, just between us two
If the Captain ever sees this log
My gawd what will he do?

E.V. Dockweiler,
Ensign, U. S. Navy


Posted By: Alex - Fri Jan 20, 2023 - Comments (4)
Category: Military, Books, Poetry

foew&ombwhnw

foew&ombwhnw, by Dick Higgins, was published in 1969 by Something Else Press. The title was an acronym for "freaked-out electronic wizards & other marvellous bartenders who have no wings."

The design of the book was unusual. It was made to look like a prayer book, with black cover and thin pages. Inside, the text was divided into four columns. To read the book in order you had to first read all the left-hand columns, then all the second-to-left columns, etc.

The book itself was a collection of essays, plays, and poems. Or, as Higgins described it, "a grammar of the mind and a phenomenology of love and a science of the arts as seen by a stalker of the wild mushroom."

Copies of it generally go for over $100, for anyone interested in adding it to their collection of weird books.

More info: DickHiggins.org



source: printedmatter.org

Posted By: Alex - Sat Dec 10, 2022 - Comments (0)
Category: Literature, Books, 1960s

Teach your wife to be a widow

Donald L. Rogers was financial editor of the New York Herald Tribune. He originally wrote "Teach your wife to be a widow" as an article for Collier's Magazine, and later expanded it into a book (1952).



The article (and book) urged husbands to educate their wives about finances, so that in case the husband died the wife wouldn't end up going destitute.

I think Jean Mayer's article, "How to murder your husband," pairs particularly well with it. Both appeared in the 1981 Reader's Digest collection, Love and Marriage.











Posted By: Alex - Sun Dec 04, 2022 - Comments (3)
Category: Money, Husbands, Wives, Books, Marriage

Sun Ra Cover Art Book

Looks like a great Xmas present for WU-vies.

Here's the publisher's page, with the Amazon link below.





Posted By: Paul - Tue Nov 01, 2022 - Comments (0)
Category: Art, Eccentrics, Holidays, Music, Vinyl Albums and Other Media Recordings, Books

Cheese Problems Solved

If you've got cheese problems, this is the book you need.

More info: Science Direct

Posted By: Alex - Wed Oct 12, 2022 - Comments (5)
Category: Food, Books

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Alex Boese
Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

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Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.

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